Posted
by
Soulskill
on Friday May 17, 2013 @10:16AM
from the but-it-was-cold-outside-yesterday dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A meta-study published yesterday looked at over 12,000 peer-reviewed papers on climate science that appeared in journals between 1991 and 2011. The papers were evaluated and categorized by how they implicitly or explicitly endorsed humans as a contributing cause of global warming. The meta-study found that an overwhelming 97.1% of the papers that took a stance endorsed human-cause global warming. They also asked the 1,200 of the scientists involved in the research to self-evaluate their own studies, with nearly identical results. In the interest of transparency, the meta-study results were published in an open access journal, and the researchers set up a website so that anybody can check their results. From the article: '... a memo from communications strategist Frank Luntz leaked in 2002 advised Republicans, "Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate." This campaign has been successful. A 2012 poll from U.S. Pew Research Center found less than half of Americans thought scientists agreed humans were causing global warming. The media has assisted in this public misconception, with most climate stories "balanced" with a "skeptic" perspective. However, this results in making the 2–3% seem like 50%. In trying to achieve "balance," the media has actually created a very unbalanced perception of reality. As a result, people believe scientists are still split about what's causing global warming, and therefore there is not nearly enough public support or motivation to solve the problem.'"

it would be foolish to say that human activity has no consequence, though what matters is how much.

That has always been my opinion as well. We know the destructive capabilities we have on the environment (Love Canal, Bhopal, Agent Orange) as well as the general effects we have (heat islands around cities, depletion of water aquifers, increased desertification due to forest removal, etc), the question is, how much of what we do is causing the effects we see now? Is everything our fault, is this part of a natural cycle, or some combination thereof?

What's funny is we routinely see news articles where farmers are talked to and almost without exception they all say climate change is real and if you don't believe it, ask a farmer. Considering the conservative nature of most farmers, one would highly doubt they would be saying such things if they didn't believe it.

What's funny is we routinely see news articles where farmers are talked to and almost without exception they all say climate change is real and if you don't believe it, ask a farmer. Considering the conservative nature of most farmers, one would highly doubt they would be saying such things if they didn't believe it.

Yeah, but you're forgetting the selection bias of the media who generally whole heartily believe in anthropocentric global warming. They are far less likely to put a farmer on that says that climate change might be happening but he doesn't believe humans are the cause.

I agree, and it goes further than just priests! Here are some interesting factoids for you:97% of the neo-nazi's believe they are superior to black people97% of the Black Panthers agree to the fact that they are superior to white people97% of the children believe in Santa97% of paranoid believe they are being followed97% of the homoeopaths believe in homoeopathy97% of the astrologists believe in astrology97% of the KKK think lynchmobs are a good thing97% of the intelligent design gang are absolutely convinced that God made it all97% of all the interviewed Zen budists were convinced it is possible to clap with one hand97% of the paganist movement think sandals are fashionable97% of the physicians didnt believe in washing their hands before doing surgery97% of the politicians think they are doing some great things

Saying climate change is real because 97% of scientists agree is a classic appeal to authority. There is a good case to be made that it is a rational appeal to authority, but it is a not a logically or scientifically rigorous reason to believe something.

If someone submitted a paper to a scientific journal claiming to have evidence of climate change, and the evidence was that 97% of climate scientists believed in climate change, this paper would be rejected.

This kind of evidence may be good enough for everyday people, but it is not good enough for science.

Also you have misused "non-sequitur". A non-sequitur is an argument that makes an inappropriate logical deduction. I think you must be thinking of straw man (which I also didn't do.

This just reveals your wooly thinking. TFA doesn't say "97% of scientists believe in AGW". It's 97% of scientific papers. i.e. 97% of the ways of examining the question scientifically resulted in a conclusion that AGW is real. Scientific method, not belief.

The only believers in this are the deniers. People who's belief outweighs even the most overwhelming weight of scientific evidence.

I'm not worried about nature, the planet, or other species. If humans keep releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, humans are going to suffer. It's not that humans are evil, it's that they're stupidly walking into their own near-extinction.

Right, this is one of the two things that irks me the most about this debate: how both sides tend to assume the 'environmentalist' side is some sort of happy-clappy kum-ba-ya singing Mother Earth thing.

It's not. Well, you know, the nutty kum-ba-ya singing Mother Earth types think so, but we can safely ignore them. For sane people, global warming is not a problem for the globe. The earth's a big spinning ball of rock, it'll be a big spinning ball of rock practically forever, no matter whether the temperature goes up or down two or five or ten or fifty degrees. Plus, it's not conscious and doesn't have any feelings. The Earth is going to be just fine.

Global warming is a problem for people. The most 'conservative' folks, those who think things are pretty good and we shouldn't mess with them too much and who pride themselves on being sensible and taking the long view, should be the most worried about global warming, for several reasons. One, a world which is five degrees warmer is a world that from a human perspective is massively different. You want your life to go on pretty much as before? You damn well don't want it to be ten degrees hotter than it was 100 years ago. Two, the longer we delay taking action, the more extreme and disruptive the action we wind up having to take is going to be. That alone is against 'conservative' principles, but the double whammy is that once that action becomes sufficiently extreme and disruptive, the only agencies that are practically capable of carrying it out will be national governments. You want a solution to global warming which doesn't involve massive, unilateral government action (and if you're a small-state conservative, surely you do!), you should be out in the streets right now to make sure it happens before it's not practical.

The other thing that narks me off no end is people who seem to think Priority Number One should be 'the economy', and Priority Number Two should be the environment. Erk-err. Precisely the wrong way around. You can only have an economy in an environment. We can keep building coal-burning power plants and oil pipelines and everyone makes money in the very short term, but once the level of emissions and consequent global warming gets too high, the result will be an economic catastrophe as much as an environmental one. Really, if you want to be a hard-headed conservative pragmatist, the only reason an environmental catastrophe is a catastrophe at all is because it is inevitably also an economic catastrophe.

I can't believe that I have to explain to people here on./ that putting more energy into a non-linear dynamic system will cause more extreme behavior of all types. We are experiencing more record highs AND record lows, more record droughts and more record rainfalls, which is exactly what you'd expect from a warming Earth.

Thanks to shrill environmentalists. It still took a decade after the ozone threat was identified to defeat the chemical lobby, and probably only happened because DuPont was already sitting on patents to alternate technology.

You're ignoring the fact that because polystyrene degrades so slowly, it is one of the worst litters and is a large component of the ocean garbage patches.

I'd happily live on top of a former Styrofoam dump.

I'm sure. Prices are so cheap, you're crazy if you're not already living on a dump.

Have you ever tried to have a conversation about environmental topics with a non-scientifically-literate Green?

Nice straw man. I'll remember to use the non-scientifically-literate-anti-Green next time I need one.

The US has plenty of landfill space, and Styrofoam is as close to inert as we can come up with.

It's also thought to be carcinogenic by the EPA [highcountr...vation.org] and by the International [inchem.org]Agency for Research on Cancer.

you still see places that think it's green to use paper instead of Styrofoam cups, even though Styrofoam is a better insulator and requires much less energy to make and transport.

Styrofoam requires quite a few nasty chemicals [epa.gov] to manufacture and can't easily be recycled. It ends up in landfill where it won't decompose for a long, long time. Landfill sites cost money to montior to make sure they are not leaking anything problematic into the air or groundwater. While Styrofoam itself might not release any of those things it does take up space and thus leads us to create more sites, with more monitoring.

On the other hand paper can be recycled fairly easily into things like disposable cups where quality and colour are not too important, so the cost of manufacture is amortized over many uses.

So after all that railing against your straw man it turns out you are the one whose knowledge of the situation is lacking. Delicious.

The US in general might have a lot of space, but most counties don't have the money to truck their crap from the coast to the middle of Iowa. As a result, a lot of landfills are indeed filled up, and landfill space is a significant issue. Just ask densely populated areas like the San Francisco bay or Miami what they do with their inert landfill - it's expensive, and they're constantly looking to reduce what gets put into landfills. Not because it's green, but because it's getting to be very expensive.

Styrofoam is as close to inert as we can come up with. I'd happily live on top of a former Styrofoam dump.

Congratulations, you don't have to feed yourself from the land you live on. Not everyone is that lucky. It's also butt ugly to have styrofoam get into everything, and just stay there.

No, the reason that Styrofoam was originally considered bad - the reason we were supposed to stop using it - was that it was blown into foam with CFC's.

Yes, that was one of the original reasons. Now it's bad because it finds its way into the ocean, where it is ingested by all kinds of fish, birds and other critters and killing them off, because it just fills up their stomach. And considering how much we rely on a healthy ocean to feed a good chunk of the world's population, that's almost worse than the CFC issue. The fact that it is inert is a huge issue any place you try to have a healthy ecosystem, whether it is for farming, breeding or just generally we-like-nature purposes.

even though Styrofoam is a better insulator and requires much less energy to make and transport.

Citation needed. Air is actually a better insulator, and the reason why it's cheaper to have a little double-walled cardboard ring in cups.

Every time I hear someone complain about how dumb green or environmentally conscious people are, I find someone who has even less of a clue, has a huge axe to grind and is an asshole about it.

How exactly is the fact that we may be entering a solar minima comforting? That simply means that for a short time things will be warming much more slowly than they would be otherwise. If we were actually doing something about the underlying problem that would be great, it buys us a little extra time to get things under control before runaway positive feedback loops profoundly alter the planetary ecology.

As it is though it simply masks the reality a bit, making it easier for people like you to shout "see, the warming isn't so bad!" and encourage business as usual to continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere at an ever increasing rate. Then in a few years when the sun's output returns to normal levels there will be a massive surge in warming rates, and we will have lost another decade of opportunity to get this problem under control. And frankly we're already working on borrowed time - if we wanted to prevent drastic planetary changes we needed to have gotten serious about reducing CO2 emmissions several decades ago, at this point th best we can hope for is just to limit catastrophic changes, and people like you aren't helping.

WHAT warming trend ?? The world temp has stabilized and DROPPED. And it appears we MAY be going into a Maunder-type Solar Minima. ..

[citation needed]

According to the data you're incorrect. That is, if you're actually doing a real climatological analysis. If you're using the Anthony Watts method of analysis, well you can show just about anything you want to.

You do realize medicare/medicaide is more expensive than private insurance, don't you?

Are you living under a rock?

Canada, UK, and other 'socialized medicine countries" pay less per capita for healthcare than American's do.

Sure, you may not pay for it up front when visiting the doctor or paying for your drugs, but you do pay for it in taxes, along with everyone else.

Yes, and it still costs less.

American's pay more per capita and more as a percentage of GDP, than any country with socialized medicine.

It baffles me that anyone would argue for privatized health care. Unless you are the 1% private healthcare its not "better" healthcare. Its not cheaper healthcare for society as a whole.

I really don't object to the 1% wanting to spend their money on private health care (because they aren't really buying "insurance" they are just buying the healthcare they need directly, as needed, when needed -- they are "self insured"). I can see why they want that, and if I was in their position I'd want it to. Its their money, and they can decide how little or how much of it they want to spend on their healthcare.

But I can't figure out why the other 99% wants private for profit insurance companies managing their healthcare, when it just costs them more and provides them less. Its counter to their own interests.

But not for the same quality of care. I think we do go overboard on expensive testing done only as a CYA for malpractice suits, which is certainly inefficient and wasteful, but it would be a mistake to think you get the same process in both countries. We do get more for our extra spend (and we fund a bunch of research that way), though we certainly don't get 2.5x more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz read on this guy, its not LALALALA it is a concentrated, orchestrated, and payed for effort to hide the truth to the benefit of a few very wealthy individuals http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/the-koch-brothers-exposed-20120420.

One side says that global warming exists and is manmade. They go too far and decide that your personal car and incandescent lights are solely to blame. You are selfish and should give back to society and the government for your misdeeds.

One side looks at that stance as foolish. But they go to far and reject global warming completely in an effort to distance themselves from their political opponents. And then when shown results that contradict their position, they say that it

You're right with your point that cars and incandescents aren't "SOLELY" to blame...but with that one little adjective you're reduced to tilting at straw men.

FACTS: Worldwide 15% of CO2 emissions are from personal vehicles, and that number is rising. The United States accounts for half of that. Our houses use so much energy that they produce twice the CO2 that our cars even do. That means American personal cars and homes produce between 1/4 and 1/5 of the world's CO2 emissions. Given our wealth and the relative ease with which we can invest in energy-saving technology, that makes them pretty good places to start trying to improve efficiency.

If you want to reduce greenhouse gases, improving the efficiency of American cars and homes is important by any reasonable standard. That's a fact. No politics involved.

Manufacturers would also be a good place to look, but since publicly traded companies can only look as far ahead as their next earnings report I imagine you've drunk their Kool-Aid and would start shrieking "OMG TEH JOB CREATORZ" at the slightest whiff of regulation.

While I'm sure someone, somewhere, has said incandescent lights and cars are solely to blame for global warming, attributing that to one of the "two sides" in the debate is going to require a little more evidence than your say-so.

at some point 97% of geologists believed plate tectonics was falseat some point 97% of scientists didn't believe that dino's became birds or believed that they were just the slow and lumbering lizards like in 60's movies

almost every major scientific advance has been made by a few "rogue" scientists advocating rogue theories which at one time have been dismissed by most scientists in the field

almost every major scientific advance has been made by a few "rogue" scientists advocating rogue theories which at one time have been dismissed by most scientists in the field

On the other hand, some people are still banging on about the luminiferous aether.

Just because the majority have been wrong in the past about some topics doesn't in any relate to the current one. I'd wager that in most cases where people disagree with the majority, the disagreers are wrong.

Remember: you're going with some heavy selection bias picking the few counter examples. For every one of them, there have been a thousand lunatics who were completely and utterly wrong.

In case you don't know what it is, a counter example is a way to show that the original point was not as rigorous as it purports to be, by demonstrating a case that the claim does not hold.

The original (implicit) claim is that when 97% of scientists agree on something, it must be right. The GP provides a counter example. In doing so, he does not claim that his example is representative of the vast majority of similar cases.

I guess the problem with this story is that it's neither here nor there. Statements that 97% people believe in can be true (usually) or can be false (rarely). But given that we actually have evidence and data, why should we try to ascertain the truth by looking at what other people believe?

It's like having a headline "97% people believe the world is round" -- yeah it's probably true, but if you really want to know the truth badly enough, you don't ask around for personal belief statistics, you try to go around the world to see whether you can get back to the original spot.

This point (also made upthread) conflates belief uninformed by studies, with peer-reviewed studies, which is the topic of this post.
I'd expect technical folks, programmers included, to understand the scientific method a little better than that.

I'm simply staggered by the number of nay-sayers posting here and being modded up to +5 who are doing little more than desperately grasping at straws while denying the staggering array evidence in the world around them. Ignoring such overwhelming proof isn't even a matter of blind faith, its just willful ignorance sponsored by parties with a massive financial interest in staving off the inevitable as long as profitably possible.

That isn't very accurate. At some point 97% of geologists had never heard of plate techtonics. Once the theory was proposed there was, of course, some opposition because it was so different to what was previously believed. But once geologists properly evaluated the evidence, almost every geologist took it on board.

Similarly, once the idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs became widely known, it didn't take all that long for scientists to take a good objective look at the evidence and rewrite the textbooks.

There is no comparison to climate change because the "for" and "against" theories have been known for 30+ years by now. So far no one has managed to find any convincing evidence against global warming, and at this point the basic theory is so well established it is inconceivable that anyone ever will. You might argue about the magnitude of the problem, and whether some other effect might mask the warming (which is true anyway, eg I don't think anyone really knows why the deep ocean has been warming faster than expected, and somewhat masking surface warming). But there isn't going to be a "smoking gun" that disproves the basic notions, not any more than there will ever be a "smoking gun" that disproves Newton's theory of gravity. That doesn't mean that the theories won't get refined (eg, general relativity can be seen as a refinement of Newtonian gravity).

Are you wilfully ignoring the fact that it is the acceptance of man-made global warming which has *grown* to 97% acceptance? It's not currently being overturned by 3% - those 3% are the ones which haven't accepted it yet. Would you argue that the few remaining geocentrists are in the process of overturning the 99.99% agreement with current cosmological theory? Don't be so fucking stupid.

almost every major scientific advance has been made by a few "rogue" scientists advocating rogue theories which at one time have been dismissed by most scientists in the field

No, only a few scientific advances has be been by "rogue" scientists... The vast majority of scientific advancement in any field today happens by lots of people working hard publishing papers, attending conferences, talking to each other and trying a lot of different experiments.

Most scientific advancement, and in particular the big advancements, are done one step at the time, but a large collective of scientists working hard.

We notice the few cases in history when a few "rogue" scientists changes the world, because it is unusual and we like to celebrate the individual. It's the exception that makes the rule. Science happens by hard work, not by a sudden moment of clarity (or in this case campaign contributions).

The problem with that argument is that the 97% that were wrong didn't do studies and publish papers to support their view, because clearly if they'd done the actual science relating to the issue they would have discovered they were wrong. They just pooh-poohed the claims of the 3%, disparaged them in correspondence, and argued that their studies were flawed without providing any kind of evidence to prove it.

In other words, they acted just like all the anti-AGW people are acting right now.

There were scientists who believed the continents were static, but there were not thousands of papers "proving" that was true. There were scientists who didn't believe in microorganisms, but there were not thousands of papers "proving" they don't exist. There were scientists who believed in the aether, but there were not thousands of papers "proving" it existed.

In every case of this nature the anti-AGW try to cite, a large number of scientists assumed that something was true when it was not. Then some rebel got up and said "i think it works in some different manner!" and caught a lot of flak for it, which is unfortunate but part of the human condition. However despite the arguments and entrenched positions and pride and stubbornness, when actual science started being done the truth came out. In all the cases once papers started being published the vast majority of them supported the viewpoint that we have not generally come to conclude is the correct one. Microorganisms exist, the continents do move, and there is no aether.

The anti-AGW people seem to be arguing that this is the sole case in history where as more and more science has been done, more and more scientists have apparently faked their results in order to support mistaken beliefs. In some cases they argue that it's because they're being funded by "pro-AGW" bodies, in particular governments, when the corporations who are firmly anti-AGW have far deeper pockets and have actually been caught funding scientists to promote certain views.

In short, it's good to have an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out. When new ideas come out it doesn't hurt to question them, but the anti-AGW people long since passed the point of reasonable doubts being aired and moved into denialism and conspiracy theories.

I think the real debate is what the consequences are from global warming. Most skeptics I know don't doubt that we impact out world. The questions we have is how large an impact that really is and whether the earth can adapt to it (without wiping us out.)

It doesn't help that the extremest on the global warming side keep giving dire apocalyptic warnings with near timelines that keep turning out false (or not anywhere near as dire as the predictions where told to us.)

I think the real debate is what the consequences are from global warming. Most skeptics I know don't doubt that we impact out world. The questions we have is how large an impact that really is and whether the earth can adapt to it (without wiping us out.)

It doesn't help that the extremest on the global warming side keep giving dire apocalyptic warnings with near timelines that keep turning out false (or not anywhere near as dire as the predictions where told to us.)

NOBODY is saying this is going to wipe us out. Really. It's just going to be really costly, wrecking havoc with economies and ecosystems and causing migrations, wars and collapsing economies here and there.

All this jumping around by saying "It's not happening!", then "It's happening, but it's not caused by us!" and then "It's happening and it's caused by us but we won't be wiped out, so let's just pretend it isn't happening anyway!", but NEVER saying "OK, it's happening and it's going to be really troublesome but since it is caused by us we luckily can try to limit it by what we do!" is really strange.

Never say nobody, because that is exactly what James Hansen says in his book, "Storms of My Grandchildren." Here's what he says, ""if we burn all the fossil fuel [it would lead to] a runaway greenhouse effect that would destroy all life on the planet, perhaps permanently"

Unfortunately, this paper wasn't particularly scientific. It's got the characteristics of a push poll, in that the most appropriate choice wasn't an available option [rankexploits.com] for the survey. It was based on reviewer's opinions of the articles, with no controls on who was doing the reviewing. Only 68 papers [rankexploits.com] out of 12,000 asserted greater than 50% of the cause to humans, while 78 explicitly rejected it.

This number appears to be as flawed as the "98% of climate scientists" number a few years ago, where they didn't like their initial results and excluded a number of papers to bring the consensus amount up.

That comment you link to is nonsensical, it claims there wasn't a "I do know: This paper has nothing to say about AGW." option, and yet there was, the neutral option. This is just pedantry to try and pick holes into something ideologically unpleasant. The majority of climatologists don't agree with denialists; get over it.

The problem is that science . . . as a scholarly field as opposed to the practice of science . . . has no way to deal with the idea that a significant percentage of our leaders are in willful denial of the sound science. The reality of the research is defeated by their ideology.

Science doesn't have a way to deal with the idea that a large number of scientist agree on something that is wrong either. As a scientist working in a different field, I assure you it is very hard to publish anything on the unpopular view point. No matter how much data you have.

Yes, a lot of climatologists agree that there is a modest increase in global temperatures.

That in no way qualifies them to make statements or predictions about economics, agriculture, land use, or politics, and they certainly have no right to dictate to the rest of us how we make tradeoffs between current and future consumption.

What you say is definitively true. But that is not the point of the article, the point is to verify that the vast majority of experts believes (base don their study) that global warming is man made. Yet everybody you talk to tends to say to "experts are still debating". Well, with these numbers they are not still debating, they are pretty much convinced.

Yet, they might be wrong. But policies have to be made based on experts opinion. And that opinion is not properly represented in the media.

the point is to verify that the vast majority of experts believes (base don their study) that global warming is man made.

Is entirely man-made or man contributed to it? Those are two very different statements. If we only contribute that suggests that it's going to happen no matter what we do, the best we could hope for is to delay the inevitable. Given the history of the planet, I think this is the more likely scenario and we would be better off spending our energy figuring out how, as a species, to survive it when it inevitably happens.

Strawman argument: no one is saying the studies are valid because there's a consensus about it. They're valid based on the science IN those studies. What the consensus means is that we are idiots to not invest in trying to avoid it. Perhaps it would have been foolish to start heavily taxing coal and oil back in the 70's or 80's, as climate change may have proven to be a false hypothesis, but now it's foolish not to. Or at least extraordinarily selfish and short-sighted.

Let's not kid ourselves, we are not naive here. The whole point of this article is to tell people that the experts are not debating and are in fact in a consensus on this issue (check the reply above you http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3760341&cid=43752173 [slashdot.org] ). My point is, I wouldn't care if it was the opposite, I would still believe it because it is based on sound science.

Actually according to them, only 32.6% "of climate science papers agree on it":

We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.source [iop.org]

Right, you can never validate a hypothesis in science. You can only fail to falsify it. In other words, no one can seem to come up with another good explanation for the warming we've observed, so we've failed to falsify the idea that it's due to carbon dioxide emissions, a hypothesis first proposed in 1896 [wikipedia.org]. That doesn't mean it's the truth, but I sure know which way I'd bet!

Here's the way I see it. Scientists are like any other professionals. The ones that are doing top level research are the elites of their field. Some deniers will say that it is just everyone just covering each other when you get 97% consensus. At their level, you don't win grants and Nobel prizes by proving something everyone else has proven. You get them by discovering something no one else has found before. Scientists are arrogant and opinionated as much as your professional athlete, top notch lawyer, whatever. If you've ever attended meetings, discussions can delve into nasty fights reminiscent of British parliament debates. If 97% of them agree on something, then the science is probably sound.

"Appeal to authority" isn't always a problem. It can be a problem when the "authorities" aren't actually subject matter experts, and it's a fallacy when applied in deductive reasoning (not inductive, however).

If man had something to do with it, and our activity is essentially increasing exponentially with new humans being born all the time (and China kicking industrial action into high gear), then wouldn't the impact on climate also be exponential?

No, actually. CO2 concentrations increase temperature logarithmicly, so while population is increasing at a decreasing exponential rate (expected to hit 0% growth this century), the higher the concentration of CO2 goes, the less warming each addition ppm actualy contributes.

You math is off, the warming trend is flat if (and only if) you take start from the fall of 1997, and that's 16 years currently. However, that's a cherry-picked start date and there are problems [skepticalscience.com] with choosing your data to make a particular point. more generally,you can always draw flat trend lines on noisy data regardless of whether the overall trend is up, down or constant.

Without regard to whether or not anthropogenic climate change is real: Which papers get published are largely a function of who's on the editorial board of each publication. If those boards are stacked with people holding a particular position, they tend to publish only papers which agree with that position.

Without regard to whether or not gravity is real, almost all physicists are INCREDIBLY biased in favor of gravity.

There are a lot of ideas or theories that, if you ignore reality, the relevant fields are incredibly biased towards or against. Bias doesn't mean incorrect, and the "reality" of a theory matters a lot. At least, to most researchers. Less so for paid shills for, say, the fossil fuel industry.

Gravity is not the best example. The reason is that we really DON'T understand gravity very well. We know that there is a force that we call gravity that causes objects to attract. However we don't have a solid idea how it actually works. We can't get it to unify with the other forces, there are indications that our best theory on it (general relativity) is incomplete and so on.

The FACT of gravity, that objects attract or on a more human scale that shit falls down. We observe this all the time, there's not really a question that there is this force. However the THEORY of gravity, meaning the explanation for what it is and how it works, is something that is not solid.

Now one can of course argue this to global warming as well. There is the fact that average global temperature has been rising, outside of known cycles. There is then the theory as to why, in particular that the primary or exclusive cause is increased atmospheric CO2 levels due to human emissions. One can accept the fact but argue the theory.

97% almost exactly the portion of biologists who believe in evolution according to one survey [metafilter.com]. The Slashdot community seems perfectly ready to accept evolution as fact, yet anthropogenic global warming remains "controversial."

Publications that go against the accepted dogma of the day, are generally rejected and can cause death to the career of the author. Contrary opinions have to be snuck in and couched in vague wordings. I suspect this is also true with global warming research.

Not if the author has actual data. Authors who go against a known field of study that don't actually have good data risk their careers, as they should.

And if the data goes against dogma, it is called into question. Something was not done correctly or quite often, the researcher is accused of fabricating the results. I've seen this way too often in Medical, Psychological and Physics research. Granted, these were papers close to thirty and plus years ago, but I suspect things have only gotten worse in this regard, not better.

I think they mean 97% of scientists agree that some amount of global warming is caused by mankind.The amount that is caused by humans may be some or even most, but I don't think anyone could argue that it is ALL caused by mankind.

They might all agree but I read this climatescienceskeptic blog which gives a whole bunch of really obvious ideas about why its natural or not happening at all like the solar output or volcanos which I'm pretty sure that all the scientists are too dumb to have realised happen so I'm going to go with the blog.

Most Americans have a shaky understanding of cause and effect, courtesy of years of public education where feelings trump facts, opinions trump research, ineptitude trumps ability, and equal outcomes trump equal opportunity. As a result, other than saying "stop global warming", nobody really cares - they assume that "someone" will fix it, and that someone is probably "the government". You'll hear things like "global warming is bad, but I need a minivan to drive my 4 kids (which I _chose_ to have) to soccer" or "they should just tax rich people" or "blame China". Nobody wants to be the guy who actually sacrifies anything.

Proof is for mathematics and liquor. Science provides the best explanation based on current data, and there best explanation at the moment is that CO2 emissions from manmade sources are a major cause of observed climate change.

We decided from the start to take a conservative approach in our ratings. For example, a study which takes it for granted that global warming will continue for the foreseeable future could easily be put into the implicit endorsement category; there is no reason to expect global warming to continue indefinitely unless humans are causing it. However, unless an abstract included language about the cause of the warming, we categorized it as 'no opinion'.

So that's some pretty straight up lies you're quoting there. Either say 65 against 10 (that is, out of all quantifying studies with explicit outcomes), or say 3933 against 78. Also note that most papers have no position, which makes the 12k+ claim kinda ridiculous, because over 66% doesn't take any position on the debate. Excluding those, we get that (78/(3933+78) ~) 1.94% rejects and (3933/(3933+78) ~ ) 98.1% accepts.

So whatever the majority of scientists say is canon, and if you go against it, you're being heretical. If you're being heretical, then you float, which means you're made of wood, and therefore, are a witch. BURN the witch!!

If Rush Limbaugh is saying that you should judge a what man really believes by his actions and not his empty rhetoric, then he's right.

I thought that being a good scientist meant looking at facts objectively instead of fitting the facts to your predisposed feelings. I guess that must be the "old white guy" science that has fortunately been superseded by collective groupthink.

I find your lack of understanding of the philosophy and method of science disturbing.

In science, one can very rarely, if ever, "prove it irrefutably". One makes hypotheses to explain observations. The hypotheses must make testable predictions. The longer an hypothesis stands against scrutiny, and the more its predictions are verified, and the more new evidence is discovered which fits into the hypothesis, the more accepted it is considered.

Also, you say "else the first scientist to come along with better proof than yours will knock the whole house of cards down". My ignorant friend, this is exactly what science is. Exactly. If this were not the case it would not be science. At some point an accepted hypothesis becomes Theory, which is to say that if some contradictory observation were to be verified, it would necessitate a world-view-changing paradigm shift. Think, for example, of the revolution from Newtonian physics to General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics; an important thing to note is that the previous Theory was not even disproved - only its boundaries of accurate description of reality more rigorously defined.

That 97% of the body of published climate science finds in favour of the man-made global warming hypothesis, but none of the 3% against has yet managed to present verified disproof means it is only those ignorant of science that would disagree simply on the grounds of personal comfort.

What you say is true however this study covers papers from the past 22 years since 1991. Given the controversy around the subject the fact that no one has been able to come up with a serious challenge to the dominant paradigm in climate science in all that time is telling. Any scientist who was able to come up with something that overturned current climate science would certainly cement their reputation in the annals of history.

Most importantly, you fail to understand the idea of "increased variance." The predictions of global warming period is not that it will get hotter all the time; or that it will get cooler all the time; but that there will be an increased frequency of oscillations between cooling and warming at rates not previously observed. It is this oscillation, this switching back and forth between heating and cooling too rapidly, that is the evidence for the global warming hypothesis (same goes for tornado strength). This is called "scatter."

Second, you fail to understand that "testable predictions" means reproducing past events. Global climate models cannot reproduce the temperature record for the past without including man-made heating during the industrial revolution. These same models, when run into the future, predict increased scatter and increasing mean temperature, with a scatter level that's high and a mean increase that's slow.

These two points continually have been mis-explained to the public, and the advocates for policy change to reverse climate change have failed miserably at getting these points through to the public---hence your post.

They claim that global warming is man-made. This is a falsifiable claim: with enough understanding of the climate you can either find an alternative mechanism which is the cause of the heating or you can understand the man-made mechanism in enough detail that there is no room for doubt. This is not at all easy but there is no requirement that things be easily falsifiable.

So, if it gets hotter, it's global warming, if it gets colder, it's global warming. In the end, there's no way to prove it wrong. By your own definition, that's not science.

The climate is a complex beast and disturbing it can easily cause local cooling even if the overall global trend is to warm up. For example if the melting Greenland ice cap dumps enough fresh water into the Atlantic to disrupt the Gulf Stream then northern Europe will get a LOT colder. If there are reasonable, verifiable mechanisms for local then it is not unreasonable to have local cooling caused by global heating.

If you want to attack this survey then there are far better way to do it: which journals did they use and are they reputable? were the search criteria biased in any way and were control samples using a random selection of articles without the initial selection bias checked for a consistent result? Even if the survey was completely unbiased in every way can you really draw any sensible conclusions from numbers of papers?

As a scientist what I truly find really objectionable though is that this is science! You should make up your mind based on evidence not on what other people's opinions are: this is not some popularity contest! Personally I think the evidence for global warming is overwhelming and it is highly likely that humans are some or all of the reason behind it but don't believe me: I could easily be wrong! Listen to what the evidence is and make up your own mind.

What about a situation in which 97.1% of people studying something come to a particular conclusion, while the 2.9% don't actually produce any evidence but merely claim that the evidence of the 97.1% is insufficient, while many of them just happen to be on the payroll of people who have a major financial interest in the conclusion in question not being true?

Because this is basically what the conversation looks like right now:97.1%: "Foo points to this conclusion."2.9%: "No, that's not enough evidence. What about Bar?"97.1%: "We spent a couple of years looking at Bar, and that points to the same conclusion."2.9%: "Well, but what about Foobar?"97.1%: "After another couple of years of study, we know that Foobar points to the same conclusion."2.9%: "Well, but what about Baz?"

This will continue until the consequences of the conclusion cause major disruptions to the status quo.

And I should point out that there's no real relationship between the beliefs of scientists and the beliefs of the general public, while there is a relationship between the beliefs of scientists and actually proven scientific truth. For instance, approximately 100% of biologists believe that the Theory of Evolution is basically right, while only 54% of the American public agrees with them.

Some skeptics like Richard Muller didn't dispute the climate change's basic premise. He just didn't think there was enough evidence to draw a conclusion. With more evidence (including some he gathered himself), he has reversed his position.

"Oh yeah, baby. I'm going to warm you up real good. I'm getting all up in your temperate climates and turning them into deserts. Yeah, you like that? Let me put on some Barry White. Now let's melt those glaciers off your top."

Conversely, discounting the majority of scientific finding because it does not match what a particular group wants does not mean they are right. It does however mean that they have to provide better models then the majority.

Put another way, in science, the majority usually IS right, and there is a well established method for showing otherwise. Thus using majority opinion as an indicator of correctness, while not infallible, is generally pretty good. If nothing else the probability of 3% allowing political belief to influence their conclusions is greater then 97% doing so.

It seems to me that you have labeled this as a fallacy known as "appeal to belief" incorrectly. The 97% are not just anybody, but are papers from peer reviewed journals. These are authorities. The argument in this case is an appeal to authority [nizkor.org], but it is not a fallacious appeal because in this case, the ones claiming to be authorities in fact are so qualified.

The study is just another case in point demonstrating the strong consensus among climate scientists that AGW is real.

The answer to the puzzle you ask about was unknown for quite some time. It was one of the legitimate objections to the AGW theory. However, serious scientists looked for an answer rather than dismissing it. I've been following the AGW debate for 10-15 years. I wasn't convinced up until about 10 years ago, because there were many serious questions. One by one though most of the serious objections have been explained. That isn't proof (proof doesn't exist in science anyway) but there is a clear trajectory, which seems like a good way to bet. I'll take it on faith that you asked that question in all seriousness. However there are denialists who keep raising the same objections year after year, and most of them were legitimate objections at one time, but they ignore the explanations that have since been found for them.

The Pythaogoreans speculated the Earth was round in the 6th century BC, and Eratosthenes proved it and came up with a pretty accurate measure of it's diameter in the 3rd century BC. He even devised a system of longtitude and latitude.